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Who Speaks for the Negro? Will D. Campbell
A White Minister Joins the Civil Rights Movement
Will D. Campbell (1924–2013) was a Baptist minister, author, and civil rights activist. After receiving degrees from Wake Forest University and Yale Divinity School, Campbell briefly served as a minister in Taylor, Louisiana, before becoming director of religious activities and chaplain at the University of Mississippi. Campbell served in that capacity from 1954 to 1956, resigning because of hostility toward his support of the civil rights movement. Campbell began working for the National Council of Churches in 1957, in which position he was one of four people who escorted the “Little Rock Nine” into Little Rock’s Central High School. He was also the only white person to attend the founding of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Campbell directed the Committee of Southern Churchmen from 1963 to the late 1970s. Campbell authored many books, including Brother to a Dragonfly, which won the Lillian Smith Prize, the Christopher Award, and a National Book Award nomination. The link below leads to the audio portion of this 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren, with some of the transcript below. Much of the transcript is missing but the audio is mostly complete.
